Applying Artistic Textures To Your Photos Like a Pro

Cheat Sheet by Sebastian Michaels

FineArtGrunge.com

The idea is simple enough. You drag a texture image on top of your photo or composite, and
you assign the texture a blend mode, and likely reduce the opacity of the layer a bit. But with a
few refinements to this basic approach, youll be able to get even better pro-caliber results.
Step 1: Add Your Texture and Assign a Blend Mode
Remember, natural textures and painterly textures act quite differently. And theres a
difference between using a texture specifically for its texture and using one more for toning.
You will likely want several textures, placing them near the top of your layer stack, either
assigning low opacities or employing Layer Masks to delimit what it is the texture affects.
Dont worry too much about scaling or stretching them a bit (with Cmd/Ctrl + T) if need be.
Your most common blend modes will be Multiply and Screen or Hard Light / Soft Light /
Overlay. Memorize the shortcuts: Opt/Alt + Shift + M / S (or + H / S / O)
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 But also be sure to try out the less common blend modes for some more extreme results.
Just be ready to substantially reduce the opacity of the layer before assessing how it looks.
You will almost always want to lower the opacity. And then toggle the visibility of the layer on
and off to check out the effect before tweaking it further.

Step 2: Delimit Your Textures with Layer Masks

Theres no rule saying a texture has to cover your entire canvas. While it IS a good idea to
have at least one or two textures covering the entire piece to unify the tonality (and perhaps
color) of your image, it can also be really cool to employ specific textures with the idea of using
a Layer Mask to limit precisely what they are affecting.
Consider using a texture (or a duplicate of one of the textures you already have in place) with
a centralized radial gradient layer mask to confine the texture to the edges of your canvas,
creating a natural vignette.
Pay special attention to anywhere your textures cover a models skin or face. You may need
to add a Layer Mask and reduce the texture a bit there.
And keep in mind that you can always flip or rotate a texture (with Cmd/Ctrl + T) or clean up
any obtrusive bits with the Clone Stamp or the Healing Brush or the Patch Tool.

Step 3: Finesse Your Textures with Desaturation, Inversion, and Clipped Adjustment
Layers
One great use for a texture is to give your entire piece a specific color cast or tone. If you
dont want the texture to impart any color changes, however, you will want to desaturate it with
Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + U (or in the menu with Image > Adjustments > Desaturate). This is almost
always worth trying.
Its also almost always worth seeing how it looks after inverting the texture with Cmd / Ctrl + I.
Quick enough to try it out. Just hit Cmd / Ctrl + I again (or Cmd/Ctrl+Z) if you preferred it the way
it was.
You can always invert a texture back the other way, but when it comes to desaturation you
may want to preserve the ability to go back and tweak the saturation further or assign it a
particular color. This is where clipping a Hue/Saturation layer to the texture comes in handy.
When you clip the adjustment layer to the texture, it only affects the texture layer. You can then

always go back and re-open the adjustments to refine them. And adjustment layers come with a
handy built-in layer mask if you want to delimit the effect.
To clip an adjustment layer to your texture layer, select the texture layer and then hold down
Opt/Alt while selecting the adjustment layer (a menu pops up from the half-white half-black
circle at the bottom of your layer palette). In the dialog box that comes up, check the box for
Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask and click OK. Alternatively, you can just add the
adjustment layer above your texture, then hover between the two while holding down Opt/Alt
until you see the arrow icon appear, then click it. And in more recent versions of Photoshop, the
actual properties pane of any adjustment layer has a little clipping button at the bottom of it: a
little square with an arrow pointing down to its left.
Apart from Hue/Saturation (with or without the Colorize box checked in it), other adjustment
layers you should consider clipping to your texture layers include Curves (or Brightness /
Contrast) and possibly Invert if you want to control inverting texture by simply toggling its
visibility (the eyeball icon) on and off.
Remember to always go back and revisit the opacity settings on your texture layers after you
have assigned them any adjustment layers or desaturated or inverted them. Once more toggle
the visibility on and off and decide if you want to raise or lower the opacity under the new
conditions youve created.